Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield was born a slave, raised by an abolitionist, and began her career before the Civil War with the nickname “the Black Swan,” a counterpart to the “Swedish Nightingale,” Jenny Lind.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Reconstructing The Opera That Inaugurated The Theater At Versailles Palace For Louis XVI
For the new Royal Opera House, built to celebrate the wedding of the then-Dauphin to Marie-Antoinette in 1770, three composers adapted Lully’s 1682 tragedy Persée so that it would be grand enough for the couple and the venue – a cast of 15, an 80-piece orchestra, a chorus of 95, 80 ballet dancers, five sets. In this video, conductor Hervé Niquet talks about reviving and recording the piece.
Exhibition On Maidan In Kiev Destroyed By Nationalist Gang
Security camera footage shows more than a dozen men in balaclavas bursting into Kiev’s Visual Culture Research Center, beating a guard, and destroying artist Davyd Chychkan’s show Lost Opportunity. They left behind holes in the walls and graffiti reading “Moscow’s mouthpiece,” “Glory to Ukraine,” and the like.
Conductor Sidney Rothstein, 80
While he founded the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia, a reading orchestra which he directed for a dozen years, and led orchestras in West Virginia and Florida, his longest post – 30 years – was at the Reading Symphony in Pennsylvania.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.09.17
On “Artivism” – a conversation with Amy Hunter
I met Amy Hunter in St. Louis in October 2014, less than 3 months after the shooting of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson. At the time, she served as Director of Racial Justice for the YWCA of Metro St. Louis. … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2017-02-09
ICYMI: Matisse and American Art
No sooner had my review of the exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum titled Matisse and American Art run in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday than I was off, flying to another exhibition … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-02-09
F—Ing A: Why Profanity Is Good For Us
Joan Acocella, reviewing two new books on the subject, considers the benefits of dirty words: their “analgesic effect,” their “cathartic power,” their “barrier-crossing function,” their role in bonding.
Linguist Explains Why ‘Poetry Slam Voice’ Drives People Crazy
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you’ve ever attended a poetry slam, you probably already hate ‘slam voice.’ … As an outsider, it’s an easy thing to make fun of, but unfortunately for our cold, dead hearts, it’s always been hard to articulate exactly why it annoys us.
Until now.”
Andrew Wyeth’s Love Letters
The painter’s correspondence with girlfriend Alice Moore, whom he dated as a young 20-something, has recently surfaced, and it changes some of what biographers thought they knew.
Asghar Farhadi Explains What ‘The Salesman’ Is Really About
Humiliation. In a Q&A, the filmmaker, up for what could be his second Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar (though he won’t be at the ceremony), talks about the painful dynamic between the couple at the center of the story.
What Would The Subjects Of Oscar-Nominated Documentaries Say If They Got Up On That Stage?
“Five of the 10 feature-length and short documentaries nominated for Oscars are directly or indirectly about refugees. … Several of the documentarians wanted to bring their subjects to the Oscar ceremony, but plans were upended by President Trump’s [travel ban].” So the Times‘s Carpetbagger asked what they’d say if they got the chance.